"Amy Richards has created the book I searched for growing up, diverse role models all together. It’s called We Are MAKERS: Real Women and Girls Shaping Our World. Based on the PBS series and the online platform MAKERS, this book would have inspired me with ideas of who I might grow up to share the world with, yet it also would have included me as the girl I was. It includes biographies and quotes from a wide variety of women, from Misty Copeland, who broke the color line as a ballerina, to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who broke the sex barrier on the Supreme Court. There are also athletes and tech experts, writers and builders of skyscrapers, plus some encouraging dads. This is a book to help any girl realize her dreams."

"Chinatown, I just find to be so wonderfully stylish, so well thought-out. Great acting. For some reason, the scene in that that I found so wonderful is when Nicholson gets his nose sliced open, and then there’s a band-aid on it, and then later, he’s in the bathroom with Faye Dunaway, and she dresses the thing, and she takes the band-aid off. They were very honest and graphic about this, his nose and the stitches. And then there’s romance right after that. There’s a sex scene. I think it’s when they finally do it. I found that to be genius. I don’t know why that scene always has struck me as the most wonderful juxtaposition of beautiful and ugly. I think it speaks volumes about how to deal with violence truthfully."

"Confessions Of A Sex Kitten was so major. Eartha Kitt is a huge possibility idol for me. The thing about women like Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne, and Diahann Carroll — these black artists in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s — they were making a way out of no way. Eartha’s book, the first paragraph of it I was bawling. It’s just so deep! Her love life I can so relate to as a trans woman. She dated a lot of white men, who dated her privately. They would neverdate her openly or marry her. That’s something I can certainly relate to as a trans woman. She is brilliant and amazing and sexy and smart and political! She was blacklisted for like 10 years. Eartha Kitt is everything, may she rest in peace."

"Lugosi’s my favorite. I think he’s in almost every movie I picked here.I didn’t even realize it till I did my list and it’s like, “Oh, s—, He’s in every movie I picked.” Another one is Murders in the Rue Morgue. 1932 again, with Lugosi as Dr. Mirakle, who’s desperately trying to mate a woman with a gorilla. Again, you watch — basically, he wants the gorilla to have sex with this woman, and they’re sort of dancing around the topic the whole time. He’s mixing their blood, and when he’s done with the ones that failed, he just dumps them in the river. It’s pretty f—ed up. Again the male leads seem completely… Oh, they’re from “blah blah blah” acting, and Lugosi is so bizarre and incredible, as always."